CHAPTER LXVIII
Up till now it had never occurred to Rickman that his connection with Metropolis could directly damage him, still less that Jewdwine could personally inflict a blow. But the injury now done to him was monstrous and intolerable; Jewdwine had hurt him in a peculiarly delicate and shrinking place. Because his nature was not originally magnificent in virtue of another sort, it was before all things necessary that he should perserve his intellectual chastity. That quality went deeper than the intellect; it was one with a sense of honour so fine that a touch, impalpable to ordinary men, was felt by it as a laceration and a stain. He walked up to Hampstead that Sunday evening, taking the hill at a round swinging pace. Not all the ardour and enthusiasm of his youth had ever carried him there with such an impetus as did his burning indignation against Jewdwine. And as he went the spirit of youth, the spirit of young Paterson, went beside him and breathed upon the flame.
And yet he was the same man who only an hour ago had been defending Jewdwine's honour at the expense of his own; without a thought that in so defending it he was doing anything in the least quixotic or remarkable. He had done nothing. He had simply refrained at a critical moment from giving him away. Maddox was Jewdwine's enemy; and to have given Jewdwine away at that moment would have meant delivering him over to Maddox to destroy.
No; when he thought of it he could hardly say he had defended his friend's honour at the expense of his own; for Jewdwine's honour was Lucia's, and Lucia's was not Jewdwine's but his, indistinguishably, inseparably his.
But though he was not going to give Jewdwine up to Maddox, he was going to give him up. It might come to the same thing. He could imagine that, to anybody who chose to put two and two together, an open rupture would give him away as completely as if he had accused him in so many words. That, of course he could not help. There was a point beyond which his honour refused to identify itself with Jewdwine's. He had never felt a moment's hesitation upon that point. For in his heart he condemned his friend far more severely than Maddox could have condemned anybody. He had a greater capacity for disgust than Maddox. He would draw up, writhing at trifles over which Maddox would merely shrug his shoulders and pass on. In this instance Maddox, whose Celtic soul grew wanton at the prospect of a fight, would have fallen upon Jewdwine with an infernal joy, but he would have been the first to deprecate Rickman's decision as absurd. As for Rankin of Stables, instead of flying into a passion they would, in similar circumstances, have sat still and smiled.
If it had not been for young Paterson, Rickman would have smiled too, even if he had been unable to sit still; for his vision of Fulcher pocketing the carefully selected praise intended for Paterson was purely and supremely comic; so delightful in fact, that he could have embraced Jewdwine for providing it. But Paterson, who had looked to him as to the giver of life or death, Paterson on his death-bed taking Fulcher's paragraph to himself and wondering whether it were indeed Rickman who had done this thing, the thought of Paterson was too painful to be borne. Honour or no honour, it would be impossible for him to work for Jewdwine after that.
He had got to make that clear to Jewdwine; and anything more unpleasant than the coming interview he could not well conceive.
Unpleasantness you would have said, was far from Jewdwine's mind that Sunday evening. He himself suggested nothing of the sort. He was in his study, sitting in an armchair with a shawl over his knees, smoking a cigarette and looking more pathetically refined than ever after his influenza, when Rickman burst in upon his peace. He was so frankly glad to see him that his greeting alone was enough to disarm prejudice. It seemed likely that he would carry off the honours of the discussion by remaining severely polite while Rickman grew more and more perturbed and heated. Rickman, however, gained at the outset by making straight for his point. As Jewdwine gave him no opening he had to make one and make it as early as possible, before the great man's amenities had time to lure him from the track.
"I wish," said he abruptly, "you'd tell me what was wrong with those reviews of mine, that you found it necessary to alter them?"
"The reviews? Oh, the reviews were all right—excellent material—they only wanted a little editing."
"Do you mind telling me what you mean by editing?"
"That is the last point an editor is competent to explain."
"All the same I'd like to hear what you've got to say. I think you'll admit that you owe me some explanation."
"My dear fellow—sit down, won't you?—I admit nothing of the sort."
Jewdwine no longer stood on his dignity, he lay back on it, lounged on it, stretched all his graceful length upon it, infinitely at ease. Time had mellowed his manners and made them incomparably gentle and humane.
"You seem to think I took a liberty with your articles. I didn't. I merely exercised an ancient editorial right. I couldn't possibly have let them be printed as they stood. Conceive my feelings if I'd had to sit next to Mr. Fulcher at dinner that evening. It might easily have happened. It's all very well for you, Rickman; you're young and irresponsible, and you haven't got to sit next to Mr. Fulcher at dinner; but you'll own that it would have been rather an awkward situation for me?"
"I can forgive you Fulcher, but I can't forgive you Paterson."
"And I could have forgiven you Paterson, but I couldn't forgive you Fulcher. Do you see?"
He allowed a few moments for reflection, and continued.
"Of course, I understand your feelings. In fact I sympathize profoundly. As a rule I never dream of touching anything with your signature; I've far too great a reverence for style."
"Style be d——d. For all I care you may cut up my style till you can't tell it from Fulcher's. I object to your transposing my meaning to suit your own. Honestly, Jewdwine, I'd rather write like Fulcher than write as you've made me appear to have written."
"My dear Rickman, that's where you make the mistake. You don't appear at all." He smiled with urbane tolerance of the error. "The editor, as you know, is solely responsible for unsigned reviews."
So far Jewdwine had come off well. He had always a tremendous advantage in his hereditary manners; however right you had been to start with, his imperturbable refinement put you grossly in the wrong. And at this point Rickman gave himself away.
"What's the good of that?" said he, "if young Paterson believes I wrote them?"
"Young Paterson isn't entitled to any belief in the matter."
"But—he knew."
There was a shade of genuine annoyance on Jewdwine's face.
"Oh of course, if you've told him that you were the author. That's rather awkward for you, but it's hardly my fault. I'm sorry, Rickman, but you really are a little indiscreet."
"I wish I could explain your behaviour in the same way."
"Come, since you're so keen on explanations, how do you propose to explain your own? I gave you certain instructions, and what right had you to go beyond them, not to say against them?"
"What earthly right had you to make me say the exact opposite of what I did say? But I didn't go against your instructions. Here they are."
He produced them. "You'll see that you gave me a perfectly free hand as to space."
Jewdwine looked keenly at him. "You knew perfectly well what I meant. And you took advantage of—of a trifling ambiguity in my phrasing, to do—as you would say—the exact opposite. That was hardly what I expected of you."
As he spoke Jewdwine drew his shawl up about his waist, thus delicately drawing attention to his enfeebled state. The gesture seemed to convict Rickman of taking advantage not only of his phrase but of his influenza, behaviour superlatively base.
"I can give you a perfectly clear statement of the case. You carefully suppressed my friend and you boomed your own for all you were worth. Naturally, I reversed your judgment. Of course, if you had told me you wanted to do a little log-rolling on your own account, I should have been only too delighted—but I always understood that you disapproved of the practice."
"So I do. Paterson isn't a friend of mine."
"He's your friend's friend then. I think Mr. Maddox might have been left to look after his own man."
Rickman rose hastily, as if he were no longer able to sit still and bear it.
"Jewdwine," he said, and his voice had the vibration which the master had once found so irresistible. "Have you read young Paterson's poems?"
"Yes. I've read them."
"And what is your honest—your private opinion of them?"
"I'm not a fool, Rickman. My private opinion of them is the same as yours."
"What an admission!"
"But," said Jewdwine suavely, "that's not the sort of opinion my public—the public that pays for Metropolis—pays to have."
"You mean it's the sort of opinion I'm paid to give."
"Well, broadly speaking—of course there are exceptions, and Paterson in other circumstances might have been one of them—that's very much what I do mean."
"Then—I'm awfully sorry, Jewdwine—but if that's so I can't go on working for Metropolis. I must give it up. In fact, that's really what I came to say."
Jewdwine too had risen with an air of relief, being anxious to end an interview which was becoming more uncomfortable than he cared for. He had stood, gazing under drooping eyelids at his disciple's feet. Nobody would have been more surprised than Jewdwine if you had suggested to him that he could have any feeling about looking anybody in the face. But at that last incredible, impossible speech of his he raised his eyes and fixed them on Rickman's for a moment.
In that moment many things were revealed to him.
He turned and stood with his back to Rickman, staring through the open window. All that he saw there, the quiet walled garden, the rows of elms on the terrace beside it, the dim green of the Heath, and the steep unscaleable grey blue barrier of the sky, had taken on an unfamiliar aspect, as it were a tragic simplicity and vastness. For these things, once so restfully indifferent, had in a moment become the background of his spiritual agony, a scene where his soul appeared to him, standing out suddenly shelterless, naked and alone. No—if it had only been alone; but that was the peculiar horror of it. He could have borne it but for the presence of the other man who had called forth the appalling vision, and remained a spectator of it.
There was at least this much comfort for him in his pangs—he knew that a man of coarser fibre would neither have felt nor understood them. But it was impossible for Jewdwine to do an ignoble thing and not to suffer; it was the innermost delicacy of his soul that made it writhe under the destiny he had thrust upon it.
And in the same instant he recognized and acknowledged the greatness of the man with whom he had to do; acknowledged, not grudgingly, not in spite of himself, but because of himself, because of that finer soul within his soul which spoke the truth in secret, being born to recognize great things and admire them. He wondered now how he could ever have mistaken Rickman. He perceived the origin and significance of his attitude of disparagement, of doubt. It dated from a certain hot July afternoon eight years ago when he lay under a beech-tree in the garden of Court House and Lucia had insisted on talking about the poet, displaying an enthusiasm too ardent to be borne. He had meant well by Rickman, but Lucia's ardour had somehow put him off. Maddox's had had the same effect, though for a totally different reason, and so it had gone on. He had said to himself that if other people were going to take Rickman that way he could no longer feel the same peculiar interest.
He turned back again.
"Do you really mean it?" said he.
"I'm afraid I do."
"You mean that you intend to give up reviewing for Metropolis?"
"I mean that after this I can't have anything more to do with it."
He means, thought Jewdwine, that he won't have anything more to do with me.
And Rickman saw that he was understood. He wondered how Jewdwine would take it.
He took it nobly. "Well," he said, "I'm sorry. But if you must go, you must. To tell the truth, my dear fellow, at this rate, you know, I couldn't afford to keep you. I wish I could. You are not the only thing I can't afford." He said it with a certain emotion not very successfully concealed beneath his smile. Rickman was about to go; but he detained him.
"Wait one minute. Do you mind telling me whether you've any regular sources of income besides Metropolis?"
"Well, not at the moment."
"And supposing—none arise?"
"I must risk it."
"You seem to have a positive mania for taking risks." Yes, that was Rickman all over, he found a brilliant joy in the excitement; he was in love with danger.
"Oh well, sometimes, you know, you've got to take them."
Happy Rickman! The things that were so difficult and complicated to Jewdwine were so simple, so incontestable to him. "Some people, Rickman, would say you were a fool." He sighed, and the sigh was a tribute his envy paid to Rickman's foolishness. "I won't offer an opinion; the event will prove."
"It won't prove anything. Events never do. They merely happen."
"Well, if they happen wrong, and I can help you, you've only got to come to me."
Never in all his life had Jewdwine so nearly achieved the grace of humility as in this offer of his help. He would have given anything if Rickman could have accepted it, but refusal was a foregone conclusion. And yet he offered it.
"Thanks—thanks awfully." It was Rickman who appeared nervous and ashamed. His mouth twitched; he held out his hand abruptly; he was desperately anxious to say good-night and get it over. It seemed to him that he had been six years taking leave of Jewdwine; each year had seen the departure of some quality he had known him by. He wanted to have done with it now for ever.
But Jewdwine would not see his hand. He turned away; paced the floor; swung back on a hesitating heel and approached him, smiling.
"You're not going to disappear altogether, are you? You'll turn up again, and let me know how you're getting on?"
To Rickman there was something tragic and retrospective in Jewdwine's smile. It had no joy in it, but an appeal, rather, to the memory of what he had been. He found it irresistible.
"Thanks. I shall get on all right; but I'll turn up again sometime."
Jewdwine's smile parted with its pathos, its appeal. It conveyed a promise, an assurance that whatever else had perished in him his friendship was not dead.
For there were ways, apart from the ways of journalism, in which Jewdwine could be noble still. And still, as he watched Rickman's departing back, the back that he seemed doomed to know so well, he said to himself—
"He's magnificent, but I can't afford him."